January 9 update, 10 sold on the first day, that was a bit unexpected. I have only 2 reporting chips left in stock and have 45 that should be arriving within a day or two so if this listing has ended, don't worry it will be up again shortly. -Ed Mika
The long awaited replacement to the EdMika 0.75mm EF-FD glassless brass adapter is finally here! I personally am proud to announce the heavily re-engineered 0.5mm FD-EOS (nFD, FD, FL)-(EF,EF-S) dual-orientation glassless brass adapter. This is exactly what you need to take your white FD super telephoto lens and coupled with an easy and reversible focusing element position calibration achieve original lens performance on your Canon DSLR camera. It will also bring the greatest focus distance from any other FD lens by minimizing the lens to sensor distance, effectively placing it at 44.5mm. In fact, I could make the claim that the adapter places the lens at 44.3mm since I found a way to squeeze an extra 0.2mm out of the original FD mount design by tightening tolerances and reducing a critical undercut dimension.
Why dual orientation / bi-rotational? The extreme closeness this adapter gives you puts all aperture trigger levers into a contact position with areas of full frame and 1.3 crop bodies (but not 1.6 crop bodies such as the 7D/60D/rebel. The old 0.75mm adapter also created a contact condition and people using full frame/1.3crop bodies were grinding down the aperture levers or living with getting marks on the plastic area near the electrical pin contacts. By allowing the adapter to be mounted 90 degrees counter-clockwise from normal position, the aperture lever can be moved into an area where this contact condition does not happen. So why did I make the adapter also work in the normal orientation as well? All the white super telephoto FD lenses (The FD 200mm 2.0L, FD 300mm 2.8L, FD 400mm 2.8L, FD 500mm 4.5L, FD 600mm 4.5 and FD 800mm 5.6L) have a rectangular area near the back to make room for the complex larger aperture lever mechanism that causes vignetting (darkened corners) on full frame sensors. This darkened corner condition can be fixed easily in Lightroom/Aperture/Photoshop but some people may still not want to be bothered with post process fixes. For these people we added a secondary notch at the end of the aperture holder mechanism in the normal orientation so that they can bend the lens aperture lever inward enough to prevent the contact condition. I am not a fan of permanent modification, and bending a lever is more reversible when compared to grinding it down. Those lucky(smart) 1D series 1.3 crop owners need not worry and just enjoy the rotated adapter position without any darkening issues in the corners because of the slight crop and the 1.6 crop body shooters can do whatever they want since either orientation works perfect and does no damage. The only compromise in this dual FD side orientation adapter solution is that for the older silver twist ring mounts you will have to use your thumbnail to trigger the twist release mechanism since this new hybrid EdMika FD-mount no longer triggers the release itself.
The adapter can also be used with shorter focal lengths but focusable distances drop below arguably useful levels under 200mm focal lengths except for macro lens shooting. For people wanting to make use of some of the wonderful vintage Canon glass of shorter focal lengths I highly recommend the Sony NEX-5 with a 1.5 crop factor (vs. micro 4/3rds 2x crop) until a full frame mirror-less body comes out. The NEX-5 also does quite well with the longest super telephoto lenses apart from looking like a glorified lens cap on them but the 1D4, 7D or even the Rebel put it to shame image quality and resolution wise in most shooting conditions. If you however are lucky enough to have a copy of the fantastic FL 55 1:1.2 lens, I have also developed a lens specific conversion kit for it that will again be on sale here on eBay by the end of January.
We now make these adapters 100% ourselves using a very high precision vertical cnc mill, lathe and cut-off-bandsaw at my father-in-law's garage in a small town an hour north of Toronto Canada. This gives us the time we need to tweak our development process instead of the few hours we were given before by machine shops we had used in the past. This awesome FD-EOS 0.5mm dual-position adapter solution is really is pushing the limits in just about any way you care to imagine because of this flexibility we have.
As always my brass adapters are machined from a single solid puck of 360 grade brass. Why solid, uncoated Brass? Because Brass is softer than your camera flange and your vintage FD/FL lens promising not to damage your precious gear in any way but still strong enough to hold on through even heavy abuse. Because with Brass we can maintain higher tolerances by not having to add the thickness variability of a coating process and because glue holding reporting chips holds well to bare metal but bonds poorly to coatings. Brass is really beautiful to work with and worth the material expense.My adapters continue to come standard with a Gen4 programmable Dandelion chip to give accurate EXIF data reporting, proper metering and some AF confirmation assistance although in practice the eye (especially using a proper focusing screen) or live view is the most accurate method.
For details on how to calibrate the focusing element on the white super-telephoto FD lenses search edmika on youtube for the instructional video. For up to date development info I now have a twitter feed @EdMikaAdapters and often post picture updates on flickr as user ontarian. I also have an article detailing the history of this specific adapter's development on the website canonrumors. I'd include direct links to these places but the folks at ebay who are more than happy to take lots of my money for selling here no longer allow them.
I ship by Canada Post letter mail with tracking ever since we figured out how to package the adapters small enough using cardboard to fit under the thickness requirements that was impossible with our previous bubble wrap packaging. Shipping is $20 dollars and as a bonus, each EdMika brass adapter now also comes with a Canon labelled rear EF / EF-S lens cap to protect your lens should you choose to keep your adapter always mounted.
A sample of focusing distances using the EdMika 0.5mm FD-EOS (nFD, FD, FL)-(EF,EF-S) dual-orientation glassless brass adapter
FD 85mm 1.2, 5 feet / 1.5 meters (see self portrait pic, still surprisingly useful for such a short focusable distance)
FD 85-300mm 4.5, infinity between 250-300mm when focus stop screw removed
FD 200mm 2.8, 25 feet / 7.5 meters
FD 200mm 1.8, unknown ( infinity with lens calibration)
FD 300mm 2.8L, 95 feet / 29 meters ( infinity with lens calibration)
FD 300mm 4L, unknown (infinity with lens calibration but there is an extra pretty hard step to do it)
FD 400mm 2.8L, 164 feet / 50 meters (infinity with lens calibration)
FD 400mm 4.5, 277 feet / 85 meters (near infinity with lens calibration but I do not have details on how)
FD 500mm 4.5L, unknown (infinity with lens calibration)
FD 500mm 8 mirror, infinity (with easy removal of a stop screw under rubber focus grip)
FD 600mm 4.5, infinity (Removal of stop screw in nFD version gear housing helps maintain infinity in low temp shooting – reportedly not needed in SSC versions)
FD 800mm 5.6L, infinity (Removal of stop screw in nFD version gear housing helps maintain infinity in low temp shooting – reportedly not needed in SSC versions)
On 09-Jan-12 at 07:04:01 EST, seller added the following information: